When you're talking about a public terminal - a machine that everyone and his dog has had access to - then you have to assume that it's totally compromised. You can't take countermeasures against exploits that you don't know and can't identify.
If you've got to stay in touch on the road then take your own machine along - either a laptop or a portable device like an iPhone. You can find wireless access almost anywhere and while that wireless may be hacked, at least the machine you're using won't be.
The suggestions to use a Linux CD or Firefox from a USB memory stick aren't going to give you the safety you're looking for. Even if you boot from a CD, the system will still read the MBR from every drive connected to the system when it boots. If that MBR is "adjusted" then that machine is compromised no matter what you do.
Remember: do NOT enter any information into a public terminal that you wouldn't want to publish in the newspaper.
When this service finally launches it'll have DRM so restrictive you'll have trouble watching the movie. Their DRM will also be totally incompatible with any other implementation and completely unsupported by any non-Sony device.
After a few months of low sales and unhappy customers, they'll write it off. They'll blame the failure on poorly educated consumers.
Keep in mind that Sony Pictures and Sony Electronics are two different divisions of the same company. It's an unhappy marriage; what makes Pictures happy makes Electronics unhappy and vice versa. As these two opposing points of view seek to find consensus some very awkward compromises are made. See any Sony product that does anything with online digital media content for a good example.
Of course, while Pictures and Electronics battle it out they aren't paying much attention to what their market is asking for. Look how long it took for them to finally support MP3 format in their portable music players; while they fiddled the market went a different way and - well, the people who made the Walkman famous aren't even on the radar in portable music players these days.
Maybe they've learned something and they'll do this one right. Reality check: now many PSP owners are going to buy movies from Sony that can only be watched on the PSP? I suspect this product may not actually be profitable...
They claim a 60 billion dollar loss - but I would pose this question: how can you lose something that you never had?
It is, after all a free market. Consumers are free to judge the competing products on their merits and those consumers are selecting open source products more and more. This is what competition is all about, right? So if those traditional software companies would like to remain competitive they'd better get busy and develop products that suit the market's desire.
Those traditional software companies are finding themselves in the same situation as the music companies, the motion picture companies, and many others. These companies were created to package / distribute items that were scarce in society. The production process required special equipment / facilities, so there was a high cost for anyone else to enter the business.
This worked well for those companies until the information revolution put a powerful computer at nearly everyone's disposal - and connected it to a world-wide network. Since all the products mentioned here can be represented as digital data - this means that everyone can produce, package, and distribute these items at little or no cost. This breaks those traditional business models; what once was scarce is now plentiful.
The information revolution is still in progress; much corporate blood is yet to be spilled. Those companies which hold fast to the old ways will not survive, their attempts to make what is plentiful scarce will not be successful in the long term. There's still hope for some of them, though - if they can adjust to the new reality and break loose from the "new coat of lipstick on the same old pig" mentality there will be a place for them.
Here's something you can use to sort through the BS: The marketing departments at major corporations do lots of research. They poll focus groups, do surveys, and try in other ways to find out what the general public thinks and feels about their corporation. Then they carefully construct a marketing program to "correct" the negative impressions.
This leads to a somewhat surrealistic situation; they advertise (in a negative way) what they're bad at. For example, WaMu is well known and reviled for their sub-sub-standard customer service. See their advertising where they trumpet their excellent customer service? There you go.
So we see Microsoft advertising speed and stability, McDonalds advertising nutritional benefits, etc. These things are clues; see the ad, observe what characteristic they're claiming excellence in and you'll know what they do badly.
Down the road to fascism or worse. The problem with deploying these "investigative" technologies isn't necessarily what use the current administration will put them to (although just wanting this kind of access to peoples private lives is troubling) - it's what the next administration or the one after that will do with it.
Human beings are what they are; a certain percentage would look upon this ability as a way to prevent anyone from mounting any kind of opposition to their continuing domination of the country. It's just a matter of time until one of these kind of misfits finds their way into power and then they'll make the country regret the day they allowed this to happen...
While it's claimed that online businesses gain an advantage over "brick and mortar" businesses due to purchases being exempt from sales tax - that's not the whole story.
Look at it from the buyer's point of view. If they buy at a local store they end up paying sales tax. But if they buy it online they may not pay sales tax but they'll have to pay for shipping. Sometimes the shipping charge is more than the sales tax would have been, sometimes it's the other way around. Still, the buyer has the choice of vendors and none has a significant pricing advantage.
If NY finds a way to make this proposed tax legal and workable it'll change the balance to where online businesses are disadvantaged. If the purchase includes sales tax either way but also includes a shipping charge if purchased online - this would pretty much kill online businesses. Nobody would pay more and wait for delivery if they didn't need to.
And of course there's some legal problems with the whole idea - New York may decide to require an online business located in California to collect and forward New York sales tax, but that business in California is not subject to New York laws. This is what the Commerce Clause is all about; to federally regulate interstate transactions because of non-overlapping state jurisdictions. I'm sure that many quasi-legal hairs will be split during the spirited discussions on this topic but the whole Amazon tax idea rests upon a pretty important concept: are citizens of other states under the jurisdiction of New York courts? Not according to the Constitution...
It's about time someone there admitted that they designed that thing to annoy its users. People have been complaining about various annoyances in Windows for years now and even us skeptics don't think that the MS programmers are so stupid that they did it by accident.
It also puts the claim that Vista is "easier and faster" firmly in the BS category. Definitely not faster - and they designed it to be annoying.
Such arrogance; I wonder how much longer they'll be able to play this game...
That's some pretty impressive spin that Comcast and ATT are putting on the issue - but I suspect it won't come close to fooling the feds. They've been selling something they can't deliver - and are now looking for ways to put a quick bandaid on the problem.
It's not working. It should be entertaining to see what kind of BS they come up with next...
Maybe so - but first you'd need to overcome the prevalent perception that if a computer says so, it must be true.
If you ever have a free day with nothing to do - sit in on a session of traffic court and see what passes for justice. The judges do a pretty good job all things considered, but if there's a machine involved (breathalyzer, radar gun, photo radar, etc.) then it's considered to be reliable evidence and you're in a heap of trouble if it's wrong.
It's a small step from tracking cars / people to when a burglary / robbery happens, check to see what cars / people were in the vicinity at the time and bring them in for "questioning". People lie, but the computer is always right, you know.
An example I just discovered today - I'm in a small rural town south of San Jose, CA. I was playing with my iPod Touch and hit "locate" in the maps application. It found my "location" - somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Theoretically that can't happen; MAC addresses are unique, aren't they? But in a not too distant time I'd be worried - if there was a murder in the middle of Kansas then the computers would spit me out as a prime suspect. And what kind of defense could you mount? The system positively matched your MAC address to the location in Kansas where a murder happened. Try claiming that the MAC address, breathalyzer, radar gun, photo radar, red light camera, etc. is wrong and see how much good that does you.
If you really want to have something to think about - consider this technology along with wiretapping, email snooping, and all the other stuff that's going on these days. I'm not going to ask if you trust your current government - I'll just point out that once this technology is in place it'll be there for future administrations as well. Would this technology be abused? It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when". What would J. Edgar Hoover have done with this info? That'll give you nightmares...
They make this little device sound so cute and fluffy; how could you not like something that lets you find your lost dog?
But what they've actually developed is a small, inexpensive GPS tracking device. Small enough and cheap enough so that almost anyone can track almost anything. As production ramps up they'll get even smaller and cheaper.
I can imagine all the fun and thrills: track your kids, your spouse, your employees - what fun! This isn't some cheap RFID solution; this little beauty will find them across town or in another state. I'll bet our government would love to embed these little goodies in every new car produced (without saying anything). After 10 years or so they'd be able to track virtually every vehicle in real time; with that ability it'd only take a little time for creative bureaucrats to find ways to monetize the data.
Hmmm; distance / time calculations are cheap; car 298576893 covered 1.4 miles on I-15 in 58 seconds so look up the registered owner and mail them an automatic speeding ticket. Don't forget to also automatically notify their insurance company; they'll pay well for this data. Heck, the little tracking device could also forward marketable data such as what radio station is tuned in, what CD is playing, how many people in the car, etc.
Hey; that would be pretty easy - we've already got switches in the seats to detect occupants for seat belt chimes and airbag control, so if the GPS location is a car pool lane and there's not enough people in the car - mail the registered owner an automatic ticket for a carpool violation.
Systems like these NEVER make any mistakes, you know - and if you're doing nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about, right? And just imagine how those bureaucrats would love to see that extra revenue coming in - and what they're likely to do to make this wet dream come true.
Products shipping with unplanned "additions" has been going on for years. I remember well when a software company I worked at had something like this come up - the install floppy in our shrink-wrapped packages had a boot sector virus on it.
After digging into what happened it was found that the duplication house where our disks were being duplicated had a QC station where each one was tested to verify a good recording. The operator of that station faced a brain-numbing job; insert disk, hit enter, remove disk, repeat. Of course, that job was filled by the production manager's son - who filled in his free minutes by playing a "free" copy of a game that he got from "someone" on the QC machine.
We had to recall all the packages and ship free disinfecting software to everyone who had bought one; fun times. The duplication house (grudgingly) paid the cost of cleaning up the mess, then we found a different duplication house to use in the future. This time we checked their procedures out a little more closely before signing up.
Something like this is probably what happened to HP. The factory where those drives were made had some worms / viruses loose on their network and when the new drives were plugged in for testing / formatting the malware automatically copied itself over. This would happen after the format / test was complete; the operator wouldn't even know it happened.
Sloppy security practices at the factory was most likely the "source" of the problem. They weren't evil, just stupid. But for HP to know about this and wait for 3 months before letting their customers know - that's criminal. At least it should be...
HP really should spend a bit more time getting familiar with their market. You can find full-featured laptops for around $500 today - with decent sized screens and an optical drive.
I hope they come to their senses before they mass-produce warehouses full of this turkey - their competition is way ahead of them already.
What does Yahoo! have that Microsoft prizes so highly? Anything that Yahoo! has done successfully (although not often profitably) has already been "independently reinvented" by Microsoft.
The most likely result of such a purchase would be that they'd try to turn Yahoo! into another Microsoft division and destroy what they were after in the first place.
Seems a strange purchase to be chasing after so hard...
Banks are responsible for the safety / security of the assets entrusted to their care. They protect those assets by erecting barriers and using authentication to insure that only the person who the asset belongs to can access it.
So just exactly who decided to put customer information / account access on the internet where security problems are widespread and well known? Those so-called professionals at the banks must have known that this would lead to problems - and did it anyway.
Pointing at insecure computers, spyware, malware, etc as being the problem is ingenious. This is simply an attempt by the bank to move some of its expenses onto its customers.
Remember - none of these internet security / fraud problems would exist if the bank hadn't put the customer accounts online. They knew this was likely to happen and now this bad idea is starting to affect their bottom line. Rather than take responsibility for their mistake, they're abusing the legal system to move the losses onto their customers.
After all these years of selling their games to retail customers for a healthy sum, game developers are no longer happy with the profit level. You can understand their problem; that CD and cardboard box (with some printed ads included) costs so much that there's just nothing left from that $40.
So now they'll give in-game advertising a try. It's optional, you know - for now. If this proves to be something that brings in additional revenue the game developers will make it mandatory without a second thought.
It's just a small step past selling their customer lists to marketing firms. You didn't think that registration was so they could send you a birthday card, did you?
After years of Microsoft and their "buddies" doing everything they can to perpetuate their monopoly the truth is finally breaking through. Linux and many other open source programs are starting to take their place.
We've got several years of Microsoft and their "friends" doing everything they can to prevent this from happening - or trying to make the change to open source look like something that Microsoft was planning or has a part in.
Ultimately, the market will sort this out and choose the software that serves the public interest to the most. Microsoft has a lot of work to do to even be a bit part in the future...
What you propose isn't far from the truth these days. Only thing that's different from your proposal is that the chance isn't completely random.
As long as you don't draw unwelcome attention to yourself and nobody wants to "get you", you'll be pretty safe (for now). But if you innocently say or do something that triggers a response from law enforcement (or agencies of similar ilk) then you're probably in for a rough time. There's getting to be a long list of hot-button crimes and if you even smell like you might be involved in any of them then you'll have a very slim chance of clearing yourself.
But if you make any powerful enemies (power comes in many forms, all dangerous) then heaven help you. Especially if the forces arrayed against you have been outsourced to corporate enforcement. Organizations like the RIAA; they may not kick in the door with hobnailed boots, but they're every bit as fascist (and dangerous) as the worst that Mussolini's Italy could muster.
Did anyone here notice when the penalty for infringing the copyright on one or more musical works became more stringent than robbery or even murder? Does anyone see that the composer and performer of those works aren't involved in these prosecutions?
These are interesting times; I'm disappointed to see what the United States has become - and watch England warily because they're just a bit farther down the slippery slope...
There's some interesting revisionist history in that article. I especially like the way that IE and WMP were "baked in" for performance reasons - I guess that's what was meant by "cutting off their air supply".
And Vista's performance problems - no mention of all the DRM processes inspecting every bit of data and each other constantly. Nope, it has to do with the way the libraries are structured and it's all the DOJ's fault.
If you ignore all the marketing bullshit then it's nothing more than the same old line; the next version will be much better. Gaze in wonder at all the new features that will be cut before the product actually ships. Ship date? Take their estimate and add two and a fraction years.
Heck, I can predict what will be different in Windows 7 too: slower, less compatible, more expensive
I wonder how long it'll be before someone uncovers the connection between "the beta guy" and Microsoft marketing...
In the United States, there's been a witch hunt going on for years. They want to eliminate child abuse; a good concept. But the methods are questionable at best.
Are there people who are child molesters? Yes. Is everyone who is charged, convicted, or treated for child molestation a child molester? Nope.
What happens with this crime and several others is they become weapons for women to use against men. It's very simple; accuse your husband / boyfriend of this crime and the police will arrest him immediately. Make that complaint Friday evening and you'll have 3 or 4 days to clean out the bank accounts, conceal assets, etc. before he can bail out.
Does this happen? You better believe it does. More often than most people can imagine. This abuse of the legal system (and others like it) are brought to you courtesy of your elected representatives who are giving you what you ask for: crack down on child molesters, wife abusers, etc. Too many are getting away, let's make the laws a bit more general and a bit more "guilty until proven innocent". For the win, make them so that the accused is guilty until proven guilty.
Nope, not me. But I've seen this scenario play out time and time again. I feel bad for what our country has become and cast a worried eye at England. They seem to be leading the way in the race to Fascism...
Microsoft is starting to understand the lesson the market teaches - much like IBM did some time back. Remember when IBM came out with PS/2 machines with Microchannel slots? They offered to license the Microchannel technology to any manufacturer that'd pay them back royalties on ISA technology. That was a non-starter; those other manufacturers decided to follow VESA and introduced another dead architecture.
That's a long way of setting some background; what I'm trying to say is that when a company that's enjoyed success for years decides that their success is due to some special insight or knowledge - the market corrects them. IBM thought they were the leaders in PC technology and made a turn and marched off into the distance. They didn't realize that nobody followed them until much later.
For IBM, this was the thing that changed them from being the leaders in PCs to an also-ran PC company in just a few short years. In their pride, they dictated how the future of PCs should be and ignored their market. Too bad for them; they're completely out of the PC business now.
For Microsoft, Vista is their "Microchannel" moment. They lost sight of the need to satisfy their customer's needs and decided to make some fundamental changes (baked in DRM) on their own. Now they're enjoying the result of that decision; sales of Vista are far, far lower than they expected. And those sales figures don't include all the new machines that came with Vista that have since been upgraded to XP. I know that Vista will never touch any PC I own or control.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux. This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end. If they're actually serving corporate interests then it doesn't matter; they've failed already and we're just watching the death throes.
While Microsoft plays their games, Linux continues to evolve and improve. This is a golden opportunity for Linux on the desktop...
It's nice to see one of the recording industry "partners" acknowledge that downloading music may have some value. Now all they need to figure out is that music downloads are a fact of life.
Something that even this executive hasn't received a clue about: Where do you and your corporation fit into a distribution system that you do not own, can't control, and add no value to?
Maybe I'm giving this bozo too much credit - since iTunes is currently the number one music retailer, then even this clown could figure out that music downloads "may have some value". I suspect the concept that their target market will obtain their music from the vendor that offers the most convenient product at the lowest price will completely elude him. They'll continue to turn out a substandard product, cripple it with intrusive DRM, and try to sell the digital version at the same price as a physical CD (or even higher).
The record companies need to take a look at the past to see their future. Much as the producers of buggy whips, button hooks, electron tubes (and many more) have had to either find another product to produce or go out of business, the record industry is rapidly sliding into irrelevance. "Record company" - their fate is in their name. Who produces, sells, or buys records these days?
Creative had a good run for many years; perfectly adequate sound cards (not great, but not bad) and a line of reasonable MP3 players.
But things have changed; the iPod has made Creative's portable music player largely irrelevant - and on-board sound is a standard feature of motherboards these days.
So what is poor Creative to do? They could take the honorable path; see that their market has dried up and either innovate in another market or close down their business. But no; they're used to getting those dollars coming in on a regular basis and decided to try something less-than-honorable.
But they got caught at it. Too bad; Creative is in a worse position now. Not only are they still faced with sharply declining revenues, they've also got a public relations nightmare to deal with too.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch; here's payback for all those crappy drivers you dumped on your customers. Die in a fire, OK?
Trademark on a color? Next thing you know they'll want trademarks on letters or digits.
Any company that wishes to trademark a logo (or other trade dress) should be required to not use things that are already in common usage. Imagine if the American Heart Association went after everyone else who used the color red in their logo?
There's a limited number of colors, letters, and digits. Choosing one of those and expecting it to be unique is stupid.
The United States had the chance to deal with this monopolist but chose not to. Then the European Union had their chance to deal with this monopolist - so far, they haven't accomplished anything.
Unchecked, this corporate monster has now effectively subverted the ISO. What will our supposed government watchdogs allow them to get away with next?
This isn't funny at all. We've let this evil grow within our democratic society - now we're going to have to live with the result of that bad decision.
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If you've got to stay in touch on the road then take your own machine along - either a laptop or a portable device like an iPhone. You can find wireless access almost anywhere and while that wireless may be hacked, at least the machine you're using won't be.
The suggestions to use a Linux CD or Firefox from a USB memory stick aren't going to give you the safety you're looking for. Even if you boot from a CD, the system will still read the MBR from every drive connected to the system when it boots. If that MBR is "adjusted" then that machine is compromised no matter what you do.
Remember: do NOT enter any information into a public terminal that you wouldn't want to publish in the newspaper.
After a few months of low sales and unhappy customers, they'll write it off. They'll blame the failure on poorly educated consumers.
Keep in mind that Sony Pictures and Sony Electronics are two different divisions of the same company. It's an unhappy marriage; what makes Pictures happy makes Electronics unhappy and vice versa. As these two opposing points of view seek to find consensus some very awkward compromises are made. See any Sony product that does anything with online digital media content for a good example.
Of course, while Pictures and Electronics battle it out they aren't paying much attention to what their market is asking for. Look how long it took for them to finally support MP3 format in their portable music players; while they fiddled the market went a different way and - well, the people who made the Walkman famous aren't even on the radar in portable music players these days.
Maybe they've learned something and they'll do this one right. Reality check: now many PSP owners are going to buy movies from Sony that can only be watched on the PSP? I suspect this product may not actually be profitable...
It is, after all a free market. Consumers are free to judge the competing products on their merits and those consumers are selecting open source products more and more. This is what competition is all about, right? So if those traditional software companies would like to remain competitive they'd better get busy and develop products that suit the market's desire.
Those traditional software companies are finding themselves in the same situation as the music companies, the motion picture companies, and many others. These companies were created to package / distribute items that were scarce in society. The production process required special equipment / facilities, so there was a high cost for anyone else to enter the business.
This worked well for those companies until the information revolution put a powerful computer at nearly everyone's disposal - and connected it to a world-wide network. Since all the products mentioned here can be represented as digital data - this means that everyone can produce, package, and distribute these items at little or no cost. This breaks those traditional business models; what once was scarce is now plentiful.
The information revolution is still in progress; much corporate blood is yet to be spilled. Those companies which hold fast to the old ways will not survive, their attempts to make what is plentiful scarce will not be successful in the long term. There's still hope for some of them, though - if they can adjust to the new reality and break loose from the "new coat of lipstick on the same old pig" mentality there will be a place for them.
This leads to a somewhat surrealistic situation; they advertise (in a negative way) what they're bad at. For example, WaMu is well known and reviled for their sub-sub-standard customer service. See their advertising where they trumpet their excellent customer service? There you go.
So we see Microsoft advertising speed and stability, McDonalds advertising nutritional benefits, etc. These things are clues; see the ad, observe what characteristic they're claiming excellence in and you'll know what they do badly.
Now - what is AT&T actually saying?
The fact that they survived the experience is amazing. Say what you want about Soviet technology, this was a very, very neat trick.
Human beings are what they are; a certain percentage would look upon this ability as a way to prevent anyone from mounting any kind of opposition to their continuing domination of the country. It's just a matter of time until one of these kind of misfits finds their way into power and then they'll make the country regret the day they allowed this to happen...
Look at it from the buyer's point of view. If they buy at a local store they end up paying sales tax. But if they buy it online they may not pay sales tax but they'll have to pay for shipping. Sometimes the shipping charge is more than the sales tax would have been, sometimes it's the other way around. Still, the buyer has the choice of vendors and none has a significant pricing advantage.
If NY finds a way to make this proposed tax legal and workable it'll change the balance to where online businesses are disadvantaged. If the purchase includes sales tax either way but also includes a shipping charge if purchased online - this would pretty much kill online businesses. Nobody would pay more and wait for delivery if they didn't need to.
And of course there's some legal problems with the whole idea - New York may decide to require an online business located in California to collect and forward New York sales tax, but that business in California is not subject to New York laws. This is what the Commerce Clause is all about; to federally regulate interstate transactions because of non-overlapping state jurisdictions. I'm sure that many quasi-legal hairs will be split during the spirited discussions on this topic but the whole Amazon tax idea rests upon a pretty important concept: are citizens of other states under the jurisdiction of New York courts? Not according to the Constitution...
It also puts the claim that Vista is "easier and faster" firmly in the BS category. Definitely not faster - and they designed it to be annoying.
Such arrogance; I wonder how much longer they'll be able to play this game...
It's not working. It should be entertaining to see what kind of BS they come up with next...
If you ever have a free day with nothing to do - sit in on a session of traffic court and see what passes for justice. The judges do a pretty good job all things considered, but if there's a machine involved (breathalyzer, radar gun, photo radar, etc.) then it's considered to be reliable evidence and you're in a heap of trouble if it's wrong.
It's a small step from tracking cars / people to when a burglary / robbery happens, check to see what cars / people were in the vicinity at the time and bring them in for "questioning". People lie, but the computer is always right, you know.
An example I just discovered today - I'm in a small rural town south of San Jose, CA. I was playing with my iPod Touch and hit "locate" in the maps application. It found my "location" - somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Theoretically that can't happen; MAC addresses are unique, aren't they? But in a not too distant time I'd be worried - if there was a murder in the middle of Kansas then the computers would spit me out as a prime suspect. And what kind of defense could you mount? The system positively matched your MAC address to the location in Kansas where a murder happened. Try claiming that the MAC address, breathalyzer, radar gun, photo radar, red light camera, etc. is wrong and see how much good that does you.
If you really want to have something to think about - consider this technology along with wiretapping, email snooping, and all the other stuff that's going on these days. I'm not going to ask if you trust your current government - I'll just point out that once this technology is in place it'll be there for future administrations as well. Would this technology be abused? It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when". What would J. Edgar Hoover have done with this info? That'll give you nightmares...
But what they've actually developed is a small, inexpensive GPS tracking device. Small enough and cheap enough so that almost anyone can track almost anything. As production ramps up they'll get even smaller and cheaper.
I can imagine all the fun and thrills: track your kids, your spouse, your employees - what fun! This isn't some cheap RFID solution; this little beauty will find them across town or in another state. I'll bet our government would love to embed these little goodies in every new car produced (without saying anything). After 10 years or so they'd be able to track virtually every vehicle in real time; with that ability it'd only take a little time for creative bureaucrats to find ways to monetize the data.
Hmmm; distance / time calculations are cheap; car 298576893 covered 1.4 miles on I-15 in 58 seconds so look up the registered owner and mail them an automatic speeding ticket. Don't forget to also automatically notify their insurance company; they'll pay well for this data. Heck, the little tracking device could also forward marketable data such as what radio station is tuned in, what CD is playing, how many people in the car, etc.
Hey; that would be pretty easy - we've already got switches in the seats to detect occupants for seat belt chimes and airbag control, so if the GPS location is a car pool lane and there's not enough people in the car - mail the registered owner an automatic ticket for a carpool violation.
Systems like these NEVER make any mistakes, you know - and if you're doing nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about, right? And just imagine how those bureaucrats would love to see that extra revenue coming in - and what they're likely to do to make this wet dream come true.
After digging into what happened it was found that the duplication house where our disks were being duplicated had a QC station where each one was tested to verify a good recording. The operator of that station faced a brain-numbing job; insert disk, hit enter, remove disk, repeat. Of course, that job was filled by the production manager's son - who filled in his free minutes by playing a "free" copy of a game that he got from "someone" on the QC machine.
We had to recall all the packages and ship free disinfecting software to everyone who had bought one; fun times. The duplication house (grudgingly) paid the cost of cleaning up the mess, then we found a different duplication house to use in the future. This time we checked their procedures out a little more closely before signing up.
Something like this is probably what happened to HP. The factory where those drives were made had some worms / viruses loose on their network and when the new drives were plugged in for testing / formatting the malware automatically copied itself over. This would happen after the format / test was complete; the operator wouldn't even know it happened.
Sloppy security practices at the factory was most likely the "source" of the problem. They weren't evil, just stupid. But for HP to know about this and wait for 3 months before letting their customers know - that's criminal. At least it should be...
I hope they come to their senses before they mass-produce warehouses full of this turkey - their competition is way ahead of them already.
The most likely result of such a purchase would be that they'd try to turn Yahoo! into another Microsoft division and destroy what they were after in the first place.
Seems a strange purchase to be chasing after so hard...
So just exactly who decided to put customer information / account access on the internet where security problems are widespread and well known? Those so-called professionals at the banks must have known that this would lead to problems - and did it anyway.
Pointing at insecure computers, spyware, malware, etc as being the problem is ingenious. This is simply an attempt by the bank to move some of its expenses onto its customers.
Remember - none of these internet security / fraud problems would exist if the bank hadn't put the customer accounts online. They knew this was likely to happen and now this bad idea is starting to affect their bottom line. Rather than take responsibility for their mistake, they're abusing the legal system to move the losses onto their customers.
Gotta love those banking corporations...
So now they'll give in-game advertising a try. It's optional, you know - for now. If this proves to be something that brings in additional revenue the game developers will make it mandatory without a second thought.
It's just a small step past selling their customer lists to marketing firms. You didn't think that registration was so they could send you a birthday card, did you?
We've got several years of Microsoft and their "friends" doing everything they can to prevent this from happening - or trying to make the change to open source look like something that Microsoft was planning or has a part in.
Ultimately, the market will sort this out and choose the software that serves the public interest to the most. Microsoft has a lot of work to do to even be a bit part in the future...
As long as you don't draw unwelcome attention to yourself and nobody wants to "get you", you'll be pretty safe (for now). But if you innocently say or do something that triggers a response from law enforcement (or agencies of similar ilk) then you're probably in for a rough time. There's getting to be a long list of hot-button crimes and if you even smell like you might be involved in any of them then you'll have a very slim chance of clearing yourself.
But if you make any powerful enemies (power comes in many forms, all dangerous) then heaven help you. Especially if the forces arrayed against you have been outsourced to corporate enforcement. Organizations like the RIAA; they may not kick in the door with hobnailed boots, but they're every bit as fascist (and dangerous) as the worst that Mussolini's Italy could muster.
Did anyone here notice when the penalty for infringing the copyright on one or more musical works became more stringent than robbery or even murder? Does anyone see that the composer and performer of those works aren't involved in these prosecutions?
These are interesting times; I'm disappointed to see what the United States has become - and watch England warily because they're just a bit farther down the slippery slope...
And Vista's performance problems - no mention of all the DRM processes inspecting every bit of data and each other constantly. Nope, it has to do with the way the libraries are structured and it's all the DOJ's fault.
If you ignore all the marketing bullshit then it's nothing more than the same old line; the next version will be much better. Gaze in wonder at all the new features that will be cut before the product actually ships. Ship date? Take their estimate and add two and a fraction years.
Heck, I can predict what will be different in Windows 7 too: slower, less compatible, more expensive
I wonder how long it'll be before someone uncovers the connection between "the beta guy" and Microsoft marketing...
Are there people who are child molesters? Yes. Is everyone who is charged, convicted, or treated for child molestation a child molester? Nope.
What happens with this crime and several others is they become weapons for women to use against men. It's very simple; accuse your husband / boyfriend of this crime and the police will arrest him immediately. Make that complaint Friday evening and you'll have 3 or 4 days to clean out the bank accounts, conceal assets, etc. before he can bail out.
Does this happen? You better believe it does. More often than most people can imagine. This abuse of the legal system (and others like it) are brought to you courtesy of your elected representatives who are giving you what you ask for: crack down on child molesters, wife abusers, etc. Too many are getting away, let's make the laws a bit more general and a bit more "guilty until proven innocent". For the win, make them so that the accused is guilty until proven guilty.
Nope, not me. But I've seen this scenario play out time and time again. I feel bad for what our country has become and cast a worried eye at England. They seem to be leading the way in the race to Fascism...
That's a long way of setting some background; what I'm trying to say is that when a company that's enjoyed success for years decides that their success is due to some special insight or knowledge - the market corrects them. IBM thought they were the leaders in PC technology and made a turn and marched off into the distance. They didn't realize that nobody followed them until much later.
For IBM, this was the thing that changed them from being the leaders in PCs to an also-ran PC company in just a few short years. In their pride, they dictated how the future of PCs should be and ignored their market. Too bad for them; they're completely out of the PC business now.
For Microsoft, Vista is their "Microchannel" moment. They lost sight of the need to satisfy their customer's needs and decided to make some fundamental changes (baked in DRM) on their own. Now they're enjoying the result of that decision; sales of Vista are far, far lower than they expected. And those sales figures don't include all the new machines that came with Vista that have since been upgraded to XP. I know that Vista will never touch any PC I own or control.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux. This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end. If they're actually serving corporate interests then it doesn't matter; they've failed already and we're just watching the death throes.
While Microsoft plays their games, Linux continues to evolve and improve. This is a golden opportunity for Linux on the desktop...
Something that even this executive hasn't received a clue about: Where do you and your corporation fit into a distribution system that you do not own, can't control, and add no value to?
Maybe I'm giving this bozo too much credit - since iTunes is currently the number one music retailer, then even this clown could figure out that music downloads "may have some value". I suspect the concept that their target market will obtain their music from the vendor that offers the most convenient product at the lowest price will completely elude him. They'll continue to turn out a substandard product, cripple it with intrusive DRM, and try to sell the digital version at the same price as a physical CD (or even higher).
The record companies need to take a look at the past to see their future. Much as the producers of buggy whips, button hooks, electron tubes (and many more) have had to either find another product to produce or go out of business, the record industry is rapidly sliding into irrelevance. "Record company" - their fate is in their name. Who produces, sells, or buys records these days?
But things have changed; the iPod has made Creative's portable music player largely irrelevant - and on-board sound is a standard feature of motherboards these days.
So what is poor Creative to do? They could take the honorable path; see that their market has dried up and either innovate in another market or close down their business. But no; they're used to getting those dollars coming in on a regular basis and decided to try something less-than-honorable.
But they got caught at it. Too bad; Creative is in a worse position now. Not only are they still faced with sharply declining revenues, they've also got a public relations nightmare to deal with too.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch; here's payback for all those crappy drivers you dumped on your customers. Die in a fire, OK?
Any company that wishes to trademark a logo (or other trade dress) should be required to not use things that are already in common usage. Imagine if the American Heart Association went after everyone else who used the color red in their logo?
There's a limited number of colors, letters, and digits. Choosing one of those and expecting it to be unique is stupid.
Unchecked, this corporate monster has now effectively subverted the ISO. What will our supposed government watchdogs allow them to get away with next?
This isn't funny at all. We've let this evil grow within our democratic society - now we're going to have to live with the result of that bad decision.